When the Cards All Fold
by LiteraryIllusionist
Summary: "They are the last two people on earth. But Matthew and Amelia do what they've always done. They survive." [End of the world/Apocalypse AU. Fem!America/Canada; AmeCan. One-Shot. Way more hurt than comfort. K for death.]


The faint static of the radio fills the void between them that could be filled with poorly-picked words and apologies.  
It's be easy for her to reach over him and pull the steering wheel a bit to the right, sending them both over the bridge, the world finally exhausted of all life when their bodies rot in the cavern beneath them.  
They are the last two people on earth. But Matthew and Amelia do what they've always done.  
They survive.

—-

She doesn't know how or why the world ended, nor does he. It was all over and done with in an instant. No _poof_ or _crack_. It was just _gone_.  
Matthew had just opened the door of a taxi cab for her when it happened. The whole city of New York had gone quiet for the first time in forever for two seconds. That was before cars that previously held people in them crashed and people on the sidewalks vanished, leaving only phones in their wake.  
Amy counted seventy-three broken phones on the sidewalk on the way home.

—-

She kept track of all the days that had passed since the end,  
Fifty-four.  
Fifty-four days was all it took for cracks to appear in streets and in fields. It took sixty for the glowing, sixty-eight for the heat, and seventy-two for the screaming to reach their ears.  
"You can't tune it out," Amy would say every time he would reach for the knob on the radio. He would slowly inch his hand away every time, too, looking lost and confused.  
"It's all static, anyway."

—-

The sky had turned black on day ninety-three. The sun would never seem to set again after that.

—-

She keeps track of the months in her daily planner.  
Dates before the end were now trivial. There are no more groceries to by your parties to attend.

—-

On day one hundred and four is when they realize they are now living in Hell on Earth.  
"I miss home," he mutters to himself when they stop to siphon more gas one day.  
"Me, too."  
"Do you think it'll stop?" he asks her.  
"Probably not," she answers honestly. Honesty tastes bitter in her mouth.  
"Probably not," he repeats.

—-

When he is up driving alone at night (it feels like he's alone, when she is asleep and unresponsive, her mindless chatter filling the silence no more), he thinks that this shouldn't be happening to them. Then there are times when he thinks maybe it should. Punishment for all of their sins and the times he would skip studying to go drink, or the times she would stay in the bathrooms after the bell rang to smoke.  
In the midst of thought he could of sworn he heard a voice through the static.

—-

Amy screams the first time a picture, instead of static, appears on the TV.  
They're in an old motel room somewhere in what they think is Kansas. He runs out of the bathroom with his face half-covered in a thin layer of shaving cream, the eyes behind his glasses wide open and full of worry.  
"Look!" she shouts, pointing at the TV.  
A man with combed over brown hair and sharp teeth and black eyes smiles as he talks. He tells of a new crack that has appeared in Vancouver. His voice sounds like broken glass and his words are not meant to be spoken with human tongue. Screaming fills the glowing, gaping hole behind him.  
Matthew turns off the TV.

—-

When she tells him it's Christmas, he only shrugs.  
"It's too hot to snow," he tells her. They had left their jackets and sweaters in the bottom of their bags long ago.  
Her heart breaks and she shivers. The world is burning up, but she is still so cold.

—-

They really look at each other on day one hundred and ninety-nine. They share dark bags under their eyes. His glasses are cracked in the right frame. A long scar covers her thigh. Her hair is longer, and his is, too. Hers reaches her chest now, and his is licking at his shoulders. Their eyes do not hold any sense of hope in them anymore. There isn't any left.

—-

"Why don't you kiss me anymore?"

—-

It never struck them as wrong to leave their home as easily as they did. It was all they had ever done. But such is life, filled with hopelessness and impermanence.

—-

For the first time since day thirty-four (it's day two hundred and twenty-three), Matthew tells her he loves her and they kiss again and again and again. They are each other's colour in the world of black and white.  
"I love you," he repeats, laying a hand on top of hers, the other on the wheel.  
"I love you, too," she repeats back.  
When the words came tumbling out of his mouth the first time around, she started crying, like she was afraid she had lost the last thing she had held affection for in this world.  
And for a while, she had.

—-

He is gone before she is. His blood is still on the barrel of the gun in her hands when she presses it to the same spot on her forehead.  
The black of his eyes had scared her.  
She saw it flicker in her own in the rear view mirror.


End file.
